When the UBB people came up with the new feature allowing members to delete our own posts it seemed like a great idea -- an easy way to get rid of the accidental double posts that were common at that time and save work for the moderators and administrators.
But it turned out to be a disaster. Now -- without any intention on anyone's part, I am sure -- any member who starts a thread can arbitrarily delete the posts of other members, without their having violated any of the rules of the forum, without any discussion, and without sending a copy of the deleted post to the author to give him an opportunity to repost it elsewhere or edit it to conform to the rules and repost it here (c.f. many discussions on the net about the differences between moderation and censorship).
We don't allow governments to do that (not on the net, anyway, and few governments are allowed by their laws to do that under any circumstances), we don't allow moderators to do that, and I am sure no one ever intended to allow members to delete other members' posts. It was an unforeseen side effect of what was intended to be a minor improvement in the software.
We can only hope that feature is removed when the next UBB update comes out -- and hope for a bug fix before then -- and in the meantime, hope that no one abuses that feature. If you decide to delete your post and it's the first one in a thread, DON'T click the delete button! Just edit the post to remove its content. Then a blank post will appear under your username -- or you can write a brief note explaining you've deleted your post.
That's a better way to delete a post later in a thread after replies to it have been posted, too; at least it'll be clear the people who posted those replies are not lunatics responding to a post they hallucinated....
That feature is good for getting rid of accidental double posts. It is bad for any other purpose. We can only hope to get rid of it ASAP, and hope everyone gets the message and doesn't abuse the feature for as long as it still exists.
-Cougar Allen :{)
